As Perseverance searches the site of an ancient lake that has existed for billions of years, it gathers rocks and soil. This material is important because it could contain evidence of past microorganisms that could reveal whether life existed on Mars. Scientists will have the opportunity to use some of the most advanced tools around the world to study these precious specimens.
The ambitious Mars Sample Return Program includes a collaboration between the two agencies to retrieve 30 samples from the Red Planet. Later this decade, several missions will be launched to Mars to capture monsters and bring them back safely.
The program is nearing the end of the conceptual design phase and NASA has completed a system requirements assessment. NASA officials said the revision led to changes that would reduce the complexity of future missions and increase the likelihood of success.
“The conceptual design phase is when every aspect of the mission plan is examined,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “There are some significant and beneficial changes to the plan, which can be directly attributed to the recent successes of perseverance at Jezero and the impressive performance of our Mars aircraft.”
Now persistence will be the main mode of transport for transporting samples to the probe. The latest assessment of the rover’s health and life expectancy shows that it should remain in perfect condition to provide samples of its own by 2030. Perseverance returns to the probe, and the rover’s robotic arm will transport the monsters.
The monster recovery sample will carry two monster recovery helicopters, similar to the Ingenuity helicopter currently on the surface of Mars – rather than a small craft.
“Recent operations of the Ingenity helicopter on Mars, which have completed 29 flights — more than 24 — have shown us the potential benefits of Mars helicopters,” said Jeff Gramling, director of the Mars Sample Return Program.
The engineers were impressed by the creativity. The helicopter survived more than a year of its life expectancy. In the event that persistence is unable to return monsters to the probe, small helicopters can fly away from the probe and use weapons to retrieve and bring back the monsters.
The two typical return helicopters will be about the same size with the creativity, but will be a little heavier. The landing legs will be equipped with small wheels for mobility so they can travel on Earth and fly, and each helicopter will have a small arm that can pick up sample tubes, said Richard Cook, director of NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program for Jet Propulsion. . Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
If persistence remains the same for the next eight years and you don’t need help returning samples to the probe, helicopters can monitor the process and take pictures.
Bring monsters back to Earth
The monster retrieval vehicle also carries the Mars Ascent Vehicle – the first rocket ever launched from the surface of Mars, with monsters safely placed inside. The spacecraft is currently being launched from Mars in 2031.
In the middle of 2020, a separate mission called the Earth Return Orbiter will be launched from Earth to collide with the Mars Ascent Rover.
Onboard the Earth Return Orbiter is a containment/containment and return system, which will collect a sample container from the Mars Ascent Rover while both vehicles are in orbit around Mars.
After that, the Earth’s return probe will return to our world. Once the spacecraft approaches Earth, it will launch an Earth-entry vehicle with a sample cache, and that spacecraft will land on Earth in 2033.
Previously, the agency said that samples could return to Earth by 2031, but the planned launch dates for the orbiter in the fall of 2027 and the craft in the summer of 2028 set a new arrival date.
“ESA continues development at full speed on both the Earth-return probe that will make the historic round trip from Earth to Mars and back, and the sample transport arm that will automatically place sample tubes aboard the orbital sample container in front of it,” said David Parker, Director of exploration. Human and robotic ESA launch, in a statement: “Launching from the surface of the Red Planet.”
different samples
The Perseverance Chariot has collected 11 core rock samples so far. Meenakshi Wadua, chief scientist at the Mars Return sample and director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, said the samples represent an “amazing array of materials.”
“The latter is actually a fine-grained sedimentary rock that has the greatest potential for preserving biometric fingerprints, so we already have a variety of materials in the bag, so to speak, and we’re very excited about that possibility,” Waddoa said.
“Cooperation on historical endeavors, such as returning a sample from Mars, not only provides invaluable data about our place in the universe, but also brings us closer together here on Earth,” Zurbuchen said.
